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#WPC12 : Huge energy to start the morning with an oddly face painted band called the Tribals screaming a drum driven rock anthem while the Partners of the Year marched to the stage looking as cool as middle aged, white fat guys can when confronted with live rock music. No fire and no bikes, so that was a pleasant change.

The big message on server is that Windows Server 2012 RTMs in August with GA in September. They demonstrated the Azure management portal (very cool) and the new System Center 2012 product that allows centralized management of systems across public, provider or private clouds. Sounds esoteric, but trust me, its really cool.

Kirill’s session on Dynamics was a 22min stomach emptying barf of absolutely nothing. No new announcements. No new features. Nothing relevant for Windows 8 either than some mockups that looked live but weren’t.

I nodded off when it came to Public Sector. Sorry.

Next preso was on Windows Phone 8. Apparently it will make you cooler, smarter, and better looking. For that alone, I’m going to buy one (I need all the help I can get). The big announcements, imho, are:

1. Encryption: Using a combination of BitLocker and a few other things, they are promising enterprise grade security and encryption. 2. Private app publishing: Partners and customers can privately publish apps without exposing them in the Marketplace. That’s a big problem resolved for internal development efforts.

All kidding aside, I’ve been a Droid user for 3 years. I’m dumping Droid and moving the WP 8 as soon as its out – its that awesome.

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#WPC12:As you can imagine, a ton of stuff on Windows 8. I managed to hit 3 that had nothing to do with 8.

MPN ChangesNothing of huge significance, but some nicely done fine tuning. Sharepoint drops to what is essentially a single competency, combining Content and Collaboration. Digital Marketing gets reinvented and very Bing oriented. Application Development is added and covers ALL development while ISV gets collapsed into the relevant application competencies and disappears as a standalone. Small Business is added (read that as focusing on Office in the cloud for small biz) and, finally, Dekstop is renamed Devices and Deployment.

Attracting Fresh Young TalentPresented as a panel discussion by the MS Canada Mach program, this was advertised as a briefing on how to recruit college kids. The panel members were all recent college grads working for MS and were all very excited about their jobs.

Rant follows: However, MS still doesn’t get it. Hiring college grads is awesome and works brilliantly, but they get that we can’t do it the same way they do because WE AREN’T FRIGGIN’ MICROSOFT. Don Morton’s group, abysmally underfunded, is the only team at MS that understands this – everyone else just f****g preaches. I think its about time Don got some funding from MPN. Or, at a minimum, MS needs to get a speaker that has actually done this before. Me, of course.

Sharepoint Social Networking With the announced acquisition of Yammer, MS is a credible player in the corporate social networking space. The purchase is so new that they have no road map yet, but look to a complete re-imagining of My Sites and collaboration much sooner than a standard release cycle would normally permit.